


Kachou Fuugetsu

by Beldam



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 02:53:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10867548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beldam/pseuds/Beldam
Summary: Time and distance are mere illusions, nothing more than inventions of the mind--yet, the months and miles that separate Zenyatta from Genji are achingly, undeniably real.Even so, he endures.





	Kachou Fuugetsu

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written as my contribution to the [Genyatta Zine](http://genyattazine.tumblr.com). Preorders will be open until May 28th, so be sure to pick up a copy!

Genji squeezes Zenyatta’s hand on the road to the Shambali Temple.

It is not the first time he has done such a thing. For all his growth he is still reticent towards physical contact, but even so, he has occasionally reached out to Zenyatta, open and aching, begging for comfort and for guidance and for warmth.

But this, Zenyatta realizes, is not that. 

The pair of them will be separating soon. In a few minutes and some hours, Genji will be amongst the Shambali, and Zenyatta will be in the next town over, continuing his journey alone. It would be perfectly understandable for Genji to be afraid, desperate to be consoled. Yet, the gesture feels more like a declaration than a request, gentle but firm, composed of emotion that Zenyatta has the data for, but not the words. 

Even so, he feels a duty to articulate it, though he already knows that whatever he says will be inadequate, housing only the skeletons of meaning; having nothing else, he offers up the bones.

“It will not feel long,” he promises, his voice preternaturally soft, propagated by the columns of mountains. “When we see one another again, it will be as though we had never been apart.”

Genji does not respond immediately, still bound up in his own mind. His voice is feeble when he finally says, “I have no doubt that you are right. So often you have told me that if you are with me now, then you have been with me always. And when we have parted, you will be with me still.” He breaks off and laughs wanly, openly embarrassed at himself for recounting one of his master’s teachings so plainly. “In the future, I am sure I will understand that better. But as for the now...” He turns to Zenyatta, and though his face is obscured by his mask and visor, hiding his expression, his aura shudders and yields. Voice choked, he manages, “I only know that I will miss you terribly.”

Briefly, Zenyatta abandons the desire to instruct, to stand as a paragon for Genji. He pulls close to his student, shoulders touching, sides bumping as they move. As if disclosing some great secret, he admits in a whisper, “As will I.” There is a slight disturbance in his voice, a tight, synthetic scrape. “Terribly.”

They walk another half mile or so before the road splits. One path continues up the mountains and the other, dogged by reedy wildflowers, cuts straight through, the latter Zenyatta’s destination and the former Genji’s. They both pause for a moment at the fork, fingers wound, and in their silence seem to ask the question,  _ If we will miss each other so profoundly, then why ever would we part? _

But they do, and with little ceremony at that.

Their palms sting with magnetism when they pull away--opposite polarities, desperate to be near--and as he goes, Zenyatta wishes (selfishly, perhaps) that he had held on a little longer, if only so he could have taken the time to record the heat of Genji’s hand, the pressure, the smooth, unfamiliar texture. 

Yet, he reasons, to have done so would be giving undue preference to the Genji of the past, Genji still growing, Genji unlearned. No, (and here they bow their heads to one another, saying nothing, too sentimental for a firm goodbye) better to wait, to look forward to Genji as he will be rather than be preoccupied with Genji as he is.

The thought does not leave him, though. It takes hold of him in the ensuing hours, catching with the wildflowers in the joints of his ankles, and the sting against his palm strengthens to a burn that leaps and spreads, a thunderclap, shooting from his fingertips and terminating in his chest. Eventually, it is too much. He has to stop, collecting himself in the middle of the road. 

The heat only expands. 

He should have known that it would feel this way, would hurt this much, but still. In an effort to mollify himself, he thinks,  _ Ah, but this will pass _ \--and then, an instant later, _ Oh, but I do not want it to. _

Fans whirring, his core a molten thing that hisses and spills, he crouches down amongst the flowers and he sighs.

“Genji,” he says, his voice the crackle of a furnace. His insides settle, but do not cool. When he begins to walk again, he wonders how the flowers can withstand it; he is sure his footsteps smolder in his wake.  

\--

When summer comes, Zenyatta visits Japan. He has never been before, but he is going in that direction, and he thinks that now is as good a time as any for the trip. The season is nearly over when he finally makes his way to Hanamura, and cicadas that once bellowed with the summer swelter now gather in small choirs, humming beneath the steepled canopies of flowering trees.

As he wanders the streets he finds that, although he knows almost nothing of Hanamura, it does not feel particularly alien to him. He remembers, secondhand, places as he passes them, not for anything he has seen or read, but through Genji’s radiant lens, the things he said of them, the stories of his childhood, his vivid, untamed youth. Rikimaru, 16-Bit Hero, the temple. The castle that was Genji’s home. The family _ mon _ carved into the gate outside, the dragons that spiral around each other, intimating perfect harmony. 

He visits all these places, and then, finally, the Shimada family plot, which he is able to find only with some amount of effort. He has missed the anniversary, both of Genji’s father’s death and Genji’s own (which his student said came but a few weeks later), but even so he goes to pay his respects at their collective grave. Birds watch nearby as he pulls weeds that have sprouted up around the tomb, wipes pales stains away from the granite headstone. He leaves flowers and burns incense, and rather than pray, he chats candidly to Genji’s father, thanking him for raising his beloved student and telling him how much he has grown since--how much he has no doubt continued to grow in the six months since he and Zenyatta last saw each other.

There is not enough time to say everything (if he sat for days, for weeks, never moving, never pausing, it would still not be enough) but as the sun begins to set, Zenyatta decides it is about time that he goes. He collects what little he brought, rises, turns to make his departure--and then stops at the sight of another omnic moving between the tombs, pale kasaya trailing, gold and white exterior luminous in the rapidly fading sunlight. The other omnic turns his head to Zenyatta and they discern each other through their arrays, a matching set, cerulean points arranged in nine. 

“Mondat--” he begins and cannot finish, suddenly enfolded as he is in his brother’s arms.

“Zenyatta,” Mondatta breathes. “Of all the places we should meet again.”

“Indeed,” Zenyatta agrees, returning Mondatta’s embrace. Laughter rises behind his words; for wholly different reasons, he says back, “Of all the places in the world.” 

He and his brother step away from one another, but Mondatta’s hands remain clasped firmly on his shoulders. “I almost did not recognize you,” Mondatta clucks, looking Zenyatta up and down. “My, but you are looking so  _ calm. _ ”

“You do me a great disservice,” says Zenyatta. “These are only airs. Rest assured, I am as unruly and petulant as I have always been.”

“Good.” Mondatta gently knuckles Zenyatta’s cheek. “Then you are still the brother that I knew.” He opens his hand towards the grass. “I see that you were just leaving. Even so, will you stay awhile longer, so we might speak?”

“Yes, of course,” Zenyatta says immediately, and he and Mondatta sink to their knees side-by-side before the grave. It is a bit belated when he finally thinks to ask, “What are you doing here, Mondatta?”

“Ah, only the usual,” he responds, humble as always, unwilling to state the profundity of the service he provides to man and omnic both, the light he casts wherever goes. “We only arrived in Hanamura yesterday, in fact.”

“I see. So you have come to a graveyard so that you might have a captive audience.”

Zenyatta jumps when Mondatta pinches at a wire in his side.

“Childish,” he tuts, batting Mondatta’s hand away, fighting back the rising urge to laugh.

“Petulant,” Mondatta returns, his tone teasing and light. He shakes his head. “Actually, I am here on behalf of one of your pupils.”

The heat from six months ago, that has sat and smoldered in Zenyatta’s chest all this time, comes alight once more. “Which?” he says, as if he does not already know, as if he cannot already hear it in the flame that has stricken him, whispered again and again and again.

He expects it, is waiting for it, but he physically starts when Mondatta casually says, “Shimada Genji.” Politely, his brother makes no comment on Zenyatta’s sudden and obvious restiveness. “He mentioned that his father was buried here, and since I was to be in Hanamura anyway, I offered to pay my respects in his stead.” Witheringly he adds, “It is important to keep in contact with family, after all.”

Zenyatta forgets entirely to feel penitent for the lack of communication he has had with his brother since they last saw each other. He is too busy grappling with the desire to ask for  _ everything, _ all that Genji has done, anything he has said, whatever stories Mondatta has that he can spare. Eventually, his better nature wins out, but only barely. With demeanor more appropriate of a master speaking of his student, he says, “I am glad you had the chance to meet him. I hope he did not trouble you too greatly.”

“Not at all. He is a good man, of good humor and good faith. Although, I will concede that at times he can be slightly…”

“Stubborn,” Zenyatta concludes. “Questioning everything. Prone to debate. Incapable of being convinced without a fight.”

“Yes--a bit like someone else I know.”

Zenyatta chuckles, breathless, brimming with molten affection, an unquenchable pride. “Truly, we walk in harmony, he and I.”

They lapse into comfortable silence, performing soundless, secret rites as night falls and electric lights flicker on across the yard. Cricket and night fowl have started to sing the first of their many hymns when Mondatta says, “He is different.”

“He is,” Zenyatta agrees.

Mondatta lets out a low, concordant chuckle. “I fear you misunderstand me,” he says. “I mean, he is different to  _ you. _ ”

Zenyatta is on the edge of denying it--but immediately deflates, because what would be the use in such a barefaced lie. “Yes.”

Thoughtfully, Mondatta tips his head. “You love him.”

“Yes,” and the the force of the admission seems to explode within him, a combustion engine bursting to life now that it has finally been given fuel. 

“When you see him again, I hope that you will tell him so.”

“Yes,” Zenyatta says, throbbing, revving, rumbling. “I will.”

Mondatta pulls an arm around Zenyatta and tugs him close. “Good.” And then quietly: “Please be sure to invite me to the ceremony when you are finally married.”

“You are insufferable,” Zenyatta huffs over a swell of happiness, fierce, warm, glowing, stinging bright.

“As your elder brother, I try my best,” comes the unrepentant reply. Finally, Mondatta pulls away and starts to stand. “I am afraid I must be going.”

“So soon?” Zenyatta asks, following him up.

“This was not necessarily a sanctioned break from my itinerary,” Mondatta admits, very nearly sheepish. “The others will be worried if I do not return soon. Ah, but before I forget.” He reaches inside the folds of his kasaya and withdraws a small, thick book. The spine is almost broken, and there are pieces of paper folded between many of its pages, filling it nearly to bursting, its contents only held together by a length of saffron twine. “Genji leant this to me before I left Nepal. It is a book of poetry his father apparently liked, when he was alive.” With both hands, he holds the book out to Zenyatta. “I finished it on the plane here, so I feel it would be appropriate to entrust you with its care.” There is a smile in his voice as he continues, “I think you will be able to return it to Genji far sooner than I.”

Later on, when they have both departed from the cemetery, Zenyatta picks through the pages, paper worn so thin he can see the finest details on his fingers through the sheets. Notes in Japanese mark the margins, punctuated with the occasional exclamatory English, and the writing is so familiar, the style and the cadence undeniably Genji’s. The folded papers that bloat the book’s frame are all letters Zenyatta has mailed to Genji when he has had the resources or the time, and they are marked up too, filled with Genji’s questions and his thoughts, the beginnings of responses never sent. On the last page, taped flat against the flyleaf, is a grey feather, the shaft stained black with ink. Scribbled beside it is a short Japanese proverb, written top to bottom in Genji’s straight, sharp script, a reminder to himself and Zenyatta too.

_ Keizoku wa chikara nari. _

‘Continuance, too, is strength.’

“So it is,” Zenyatta agrees, running his fingers across the words. He closes the book and packs it away. 

In the morning, he is on a ship to his next destination; Hanamura watches well behind. 

\--

When Zenyatta finally returns to Nepal, Genji has already gone. 

He knows that well before he arrives. He has already heard the countless stories carried on the wind; tales of a man who is as much man as machine, wandering through cities and through the countryside, a protector and a warrior. A teacher and a sage. Not a student anymore, but a master.

Zenyatta tries not to let Genji’s departure preoccupy him. He refocuses his thoughts on the village he has not seen in so long, yet still so deeply adores. He goes to old friends and students; visits their relatives, their children, their graves. He stops by gardens he had helped to plant years and years ago, sifting through the blossoms and bushes that have thrived even in his absence. He marvels at homes that he and his siblings had helped repair after they’d been damaged by snow or storms, that now have been rebuilt from scratch, completely purging the weaknesses that they had temporarily absolved. He is greeted and embraced by people he had saved from fatal injury, who no longer bear a single visible scar. Everything is familiar, and everything is strange, at once beautiful and mysterious. It is gratifying to see, the way this place has continued on, keeping steady course without his guidance.

As Genji has.

Once he is finished in the village, he ascends the mountain, to the monastery, and his siblings greet him with warmth and laughter. They catch up, exchange stories (gentle, sympathetic, offering without his prompt, they spare Zenyatta anecdotes of the cyborg who is no longer there). At the end of the day, they offer Zenyatta his old room to stay in, which had become Genji’s in his absence, and Zenyatta accepts, having no place else to go. 

The space is mostly empty, as it was while it was his, save for a handful of Genji’s personal effects: a painting of readied warriors before a golden dragon. A pair of well-used swords. A photograph of two young men (Genji as he was before, the unruly sparrow, and his brother at his side, the hardened heir).

As he is about to settle on the floor, he notices the row of books sat upon one of the room’s low tables, a small stack of envelopes (letters from Zenyatta that had arrived after Genji had already left) bound nearby. There is an empty slot between two of the spines; Zenyatta retrieves the book he received from Mondatta, and finds it fits perfectly in the gap.

“Ah!” he says brightly, as if he had just completed a great puzzle, set right, in that single action, a prevailing disorder in the room. 

He gives one last look around, a perfunctory acknowledgement of all of Genji’s worldly possessions, and just like that, a greater emptiness is exposed, well beyond his power to repair. His shoulders drop, hands clenching at his hips. “Ah.”

He retreats, sits down. Shuts off his array and tries to meditate. He is exhausted from his travels, the exertion of feeling so intensely for someone far away; instead, he sleeps. 

He dreams of walking with Genji, as they had when they first met. Heading to an unknown destination, taking the long way round. Wading side-by-side through a shallow river at dusk, the reflections of stars bending around their shins. The light of Genji’s visor bobbing on the water, an incandescent spirit lost at sea; the blue of Zenyatta’s array shining steadily ahead, a guiding constellation, 3-by-3.

Bereft, Zenyatta whispers, “I wish that I could be where you are now.”

Genji laughs, and his voice skips across the water like a stone. Visor suddenly gone, synthetic parts black and red, his eyes with their crimson shine. “And where am I, if I am not already by your side?”

“This is different,” Zenyatta argues. “Just a dream.”

“Ah, but Master, did you forget?” Genji smiles, no scars, a man with outrageous green hair, a boyish smile. “That I am with you always?”

“I have not forgotten. But even with that in my mind, my soul still aches.”

“Then that alone is proof that I am here,” says a Genji that Zenyatta has yet to meet, expression kind and wise. The water slows. Lotus blossoms unfurl about his legs. The milky way spills into the river, and it becomes blue and pink and red with cosmic light. “For if you are aching, it is because we ache together, bound as one. Never doubt that I am with you, and with you, and with you, in all places at all times. Have faith, Zenyatta. Have faith.”

Burning with fission, a sun’s heart splitting in two, Zenyatta’s array blinks black then gold then white. “I do,” Zenyatta promises, “I do.”

\-- 

“I thought you might be here,” Genji says while Zenyatta crouches to light candles before Mondatta’s photo at King’s Row.

“Yes,” Zenyatta says in turn, and he faces his once-student. Genji is--oh, but he is everything, similar and different, recognizable and not. Standing straighter now, aura brighter, a sublime presence beneath the moon, a cherished recollection, even more exquisite in the flesh--

\--but still Zenyatta’s, the Genji who he loved, still loves, will love even once he’s slipped beyond, into the Iris’s gold embrace. A keen adoration steals the omnic’s voice, renders it weak and breathy, but still he speaks. “I thought the same of you.”

Genji comes forward as Zenyatta stands. Firelight flickers around his ankles, mingles with the throbbing neon glow upon his chest and shoulders. “I should have been with you when he passed.”

“You were with me,” the omnic says. He presses closer, and when they do not quite touch, Genji moves further in, closing the space between. “As you always are.”

A laugh, soft and sad. “Ah, so I was,” Genji concedes. “Even so, it is precisely as I said.”

“How do you mean?” Zenyatta asks.

Genji reaches out, and he squeezes Zenyatta’s hand as he did once on the road to the Shambali Temple. This time, there is no burn, no electric snap. Only a balm, golden and sweet, light without the accompanying heat--and _ this _ , Zenyatta dedicates to memory, the immaculate Genji of Now, born from the chrysalis of all the Genjis of Before. With his free hand, Genji pulls away his visor. His eyes shine, dark as loamy earth after the rain. “I have missed you terribly.”

Zenyatta weaves his fingers through Genji’s, holding fast. 

“As have I,” the omnic echoes. “Terribly.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Kachou Fuugetsu" literally translates, "Flower, Bird, Wind, Moon," and means, "Through nature's beauty, find oneself."


End file.
